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Businesses

Behind the Scenes At Gamestop's Private Expo 13

Posted by Zonk from the crouching-manager-hidden-gamer dept.
Gamasutra has a look behind the curtain, at a game expo few people even know exist. The annual Gamestop expo has a lot of the air of old-E3, with a greater focus on business deals, swag, and benefits for the hard working Gamestopper. "What did the show accomplish? In some sense, it seemed almost to be a reward for the store managers -- who work long hours on the front lines -- to listen to the show-floor scuttlebutt. While the official line was that the show was all business, bringing the managers to Las Vegas, loading their arms with swag, and letting them play pre-release games is obviously a big draw for these 'professional gamers'. They were so enthusiastic, in fact, that a huge number stayed beyond the 9 PM closing time; kiosks had to be deactivated before the die-hard crowd filtered away."
Quake

Submission + - ET: Quake Wars, Carmack's MegaTextures Explode (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "id Software has certainly gotten mileage out of the Doom 3 engine and the train keeps on rolling. A couple of days ago, id released a demo of their new team-based combat first person shooter — Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The screen shots here, taken on a Geforce 8800 with high quality details and 4X anti-aliasing, show the first application of John Carmack's MegaTexture technology. This technology allows rendering of extremely large outdoor terrain without the need to re-use or tile multiple smaller textures. The trick is all in Carmack's compression technique where for example, a 6 gig environment landscape texture map can be compressed down to 8MB without any loss in image quality. The HDR-like lighting in the engine looks impressive as well."
United States

Submission + - Intelligently deranged creationists at Baylor (uncommondescent.com)

Submitted by OMITSDDI
OMITSDDI writes: Dr Debmski, after a spat over an "intelligent design lab" at Baylor university and a decision going against him and his friend, publishes the home phone numbers and street address of the regents of the university and advises his blog readers to contact them "respectfully" and try to get the ID research lab reinstated. The lab's just a website really, and it'll disprove "darwinism" if left alone. Honestly. Here is the page www.uncommondescent.com Here is some other commentary PZ Myes take on it
Spam

Submission + - recovery from Spam

Submitted by freemantim
freemantim writes: I work for a smallish sized business with a little over a 100 users. We (as most everyone else) have been hit by the huge influx of spam and have been forced to move from one spam filter program to another (using both at one point as well) to help combat the problem. We are going to be moving to Postini within the month, however in the meantime we are trying to clean up the mess we have been dealt while we prepare to move to the new system. The issue is we used Trend Interscan for over 6 months without much of an issue (a valid email was blocked everyonce in a while) but when the influx of spam started to hit us, Trend was begining to quarantine valid email even if the rules we set specifically stated particular senders should be allowed. The problem with Trend Interscan is it does not give good reporting on why a particular email was blocked (it lists either SPAM, or Content) and Interscan would not let us view the email to verify if something was legit or not. So we put X-Wall in between Trend and our Exchange server and anything that X-Wall considered spam encapsilated the offending mail and forwarded it to a specific mailbox which would allow us to view and forward valid email. This has worked fairly well for us since we have better control over what is allowed and what isn't, plus the reporting on why X-Wall blocked something is more detailed. The big issue we are facing is, since the start of the big influx of Spam at the end of July there is likely a small percentage of legitimate email that has been blocked by Trend that we weren't aware of, but to clear our IT conscience want to basically release all email blocked by Trend and have it flitered by X-Wall and then finally on to the end user. Has anyone here gone through this process and have any recommendations on what we should or shouldn't do? Thanks
The Courts

Lindor Attacks Record Company Copyright-Pooling 136

Posted by Zonk from the avoiding-the-rule-of-inverse-ninjas dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Back in March, 2006, Marie Lindor called the record companies suing her a collusive cartel, and their joint agreement to pool their copyrights "copyright misuse" (pdf). A year and a half later, the RIAA apparently got nervous about that allegation and made a motion to strike the allegations. Ms. Lindor has struck back, pointing out to the Judge not only that the RIAA's arguments had no legal basis, but also that its brief was completely silent as to any justification for the record companies' copyright-pooling agreement. Such a justification would be necessary for it to pass muster under 'rule of reason' analysis mandated by the US Supreme Court. Ms. Lindor, a home health worker who has never even used a computer, let alone infringed anyone's copyrights with a p2p file sharing program, is the same defendant who exposed, with a little help from her friends, some of the weaknesses in the RIAA's expert testimony. She also obtained a ruling that the RIAA's $750-per-song file damages theory might be a wee bit unconstitutional."
Spam

Submission + - TD Ameritrade Finds Cause of Client Spam

Submitted by
RalphTheWonderLlama
RalphTheWonderLlama writes: "There have been many remarks from users of online stock brokers about how their emails have been improperly given over to spammers and today TD Ameritrade released details of their investigation into the matter (along with a video message from the CEO and special FAQ at www.amtd.com). It seems some "unauthorized code" had exposed client email addresses and possibly other sensitive information from an internal database. Many had just expected they gave away that info like evil corporations are wont to do. Being a client myself, I don't know if this is any better to hear."
Security

Submission + - Texas A&M malware injector facing jail time (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Apparently his computer science degree didn't include a morals minor. The FBI today said a graduate of Texas A & M University was convicted of recklessly accessing and causing damage to the protected computer system of his former alma mater.Luis Castillo, 23, who graduated with a Bachelor's degree in computer science from Texas A & M University in December 2006, admitted to recklessly gaining unauthorized access to the University's network and capturing 133,000 student and employees Net ID's and passwords. As a result of the intrusions and injection of the malicious software by Castillo, the University incurred a loss of over $67,000 in its efforts to protect students and faculty from the illegal or fraudulent use of private account information, including the retrieval of the captured files. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19488"
Censorship

Submission + - Care home workers in web campaign victory (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
Eric Lee
Eric Lee writes: "An attempt by a London charity to stop campaigners using the web to highlight its pay cuts has ended in failure, according to this report in The Register. The LabourStart website, which orchestrated the online campaign on behalf of Britain's public sector union Unison had been compelled by internet service provider 1&1 to take down a campaign which the employer had declared to be "potentially libellous" — and then promptly relaunched the campaign on a new site, hosted in Australia, cheekily called We will not be silenced. Several days after the campaign was closed down on 1&1, the company notified LabourStart that the material was in fact not defamatory. LabourStart has now informed 1&1 that it is considering raising the behavior of the company with Britain's regulatory body for the communications sector, Ofcom."
Security

Submission + - TD Ameritrade customer details stolen by spammers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an announcement sent out via email at 10AM EST, TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation (part of TD Bank Financial Group) sent an announcement to it's customers saying it "..has discovered and eliminated unauthorized code from its systems that allowed access to an internal database. The discovery was made as the result of an internal investigation of stock-related SPAM. .... Information such as email addresses, names, addresses and phone numbers was retrieved from this database and affects TD AMERITRADE retail and institutional clients. While more sensitive information like account numbers, date of birth and Social Security Numbers is stored in this database, there is no evidence that it was taken." The investigation was performed by ID Analytics which claims to have "...found no evidence of identity theft related to TD AMERITRADE clients as a result of this issue" At the time of writing, there are no details available on the number of people affected by the breach, who was responsible, or how the breach occurred.
Google

Submission + - Cops using Google Earth to find Marijuana (news.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "When a Wisconsin man was arrested last October on suspicion of harvesting 18 pounds of marijuana, it was partly thanks to Google Earth.

The sheriff's deputies who pulled the man over found, in addition to what they estimated was at least $63,000 worth of pot, a GPS unit around his neck that was filled with a series of local coordinates, according to The Journal Times of Racine, Wis. After plugging those coordinates into Google Earth, the police were able to identify the location of several marijuana fields to which the man was allegedly connected.

While the cops would have been able to find the fields strictly based on the GPS coordinates, their use of Google Earth demonstrated just one way in which law enforcement agencies across the country and around the world are using the popular mapping service, both to fight crime and to offer valuable information to the public."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Apple Cuts Linux iPod Users Off (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Will Fisher
Will Fisher writes: "New iPods will no longer be able to work with Linux. iTunes now writes some kind of hash (SHA1, md5?) to the iPod database which new iPods check against. If this check fails then the iPod reports that it contains 0 songs. This appears to be protection against 3rd party applications writing out their own databases. We haven't found out how to generate our own valid hashes (but we do know the hash includes the database itself, and possibly the iPod serial number), and are looking for help."
Power

Submission + - GM adds largest solar installation in corporate US

Submitted by
SK
SK writes: "General Motors is adding one of the largest solar power installations in corporate use in the United States to the roof of its Service and Parts Operations (SPO) warehouse in Fontana, California. The solar power array will provide about half of the electricity needed to run the facility and will feed enough extra electricity back to the grid to power over 300 California homes for a year. General Motors estimates that the solar array at its SPO facility in Fontana will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 355 metric tons each year, while reducing its electricity costs by about 10 percent a year."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Madeleine L'Engle, 1918 - 2007

Submitted by mosel-saar-ruwer
mosel-saar-ruwer writes: Madeleine L'Engle Camp Franklin passed away, on Sept. 6, aged 88, at Rose Haven nursing home, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Even before we discovered Tolkien, CS Lewis, or Robert Heinlein, many /.-ers' first exposure to Science Fiction & Fantasy was surely L'Engle's 1962 novel, A Wrinkle in Time. The Washington Post has an obituary, the New York Post's John Podhoretz relates his childhood memories of life at 924 West End Avenue with Mr. & Mrs. Franklin, and the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby recalls the horror of IT. Finally, the Wall Street Journal's Meghan Cox Gurdon describes a cynic's encounter with Wrinkle.

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